VV(11): Space/Time Employment Agency
Dave Monroe
monroe at mpm.edu
Mon Mar 5 00:40:05 CST 2001
"Space/Time Employment Agency" (V., Ch. 8, Sec. i, p. 215)
While that "Space/Time" seems an obvious Einsteinian reference, do also
note that ...
"Anthroresearch Associates in Maiden Lane, New York, where V.'s Benny
Profane becomes a night watchmen and meets the manikin's, seems a nod to
the Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man. There a guard works in a Maiden
Lane bank. Benny found his job at the Space/Time Employment Agency,
chapter sixteen of The Demolished Man includes 'Space/d! Time' in the
first paragraph. Bester's novel was the basis for a 1959 opera libretto
that Pynchon proposed to the Ford Foundation for financial backing. The
grant application was denied."
http://www.pynchonfiles.com/shock.htm
Recall Pynchon's admiration for postwar science fiction, "in which the
decade after Hiroshima saw one of the most remarkable flowerings of
literary talent and, quite often, genius, in our history." See "Is it
O.K. to Be a Luddite?," New York Times Book Review, October 28, 1984 ...
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html
And cf. as well Harry Harrison's "Introduction" (pp. vii-x) to a recent
ed. of Bester's novel ...
"It is the story of Ben Reich, the richest capitalist in a capitalist
future." (viii)
"As Reich's plans develop and unfold, , so does this corrupt, exciting,
dangerous and disgusting city. The reader is instantly pushed into a
new environment, hurtled along at top speed by the language, the color,
the wild invention that never slows, never stops. The world comes alive
with the people, machines, apparatus, emotions, and desires." (viii)
"This kind of novel had never happened before" (viii)
"Some critics have compared this novel with the Jacobean revenge plays."
(ix)
"The author is unafraid. He not only takes linguistic risks but hurls
himself into linguistic attacks. New words, grammar, and slang abound"
(ix)
"The humor is always there, for Bester was a witty and funny man, but it
is often undercut in his novel. A scene can be horrible--or is it
funny? or both at the same time?" (ix)
See Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man (New York: Vintage, 1996 [1951]).
Chapter 16 here begins on p. 208, that "Space/d! Time" is four lines in
...
By the way, Einstein was awarded his Nobel Prize in Physics (1921) not
for his theories of relativity, but rather for his explanation of the
photoelectric effect. As in the following ...
"Stencil even departed from his usual ploddings to daydream a vision of
her [V.] now, at age seventy-six: skin radiant with the bloom of some
new plastic; both eyes glass but now containing photoelectric cells ..."
(p. 411)
On Einstein, see, perhaps ...
Vargish, Thomas and Delo E. Mook. Inside Modernism:
Relativity Theory, Cubism, Narrative. New Haven, CN:
Yale UP, 1997.
But on the other hand ...
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